If you have a popular YouTube Channel, you have likely noticed that the views for Short Form and Long Form videos have been lower than usual at the end of April 2026. You are not going crazy; this is a glitch in the system at Google/Youtube.
We started to notice the lower number of views in the Monetization tab on the YouTube Studio app in mid April 2026. For Channels we administer that receive over 2 million views per day, the data were showing less than 400,000. Some of the Channels that are not yet monetized are showing a number that is much smaller than anticipated by those looking to qualify for YouTube Shorts Feed ads.
For several days YouTube creators were left wondering if their views had, in fact, dropped significantly or if there was another issue. Any time views drop on a YouTube Channel most creators assume it is something they have done to “shadow ban” themselves on the YouTube Shorts Feed or through the algorithm.
Fortunately, this looks to be an issue that is being address within YouTube and Google. We noticed that on Wednesday, April 29th, 2026 the views on the monetization tab seem to be jumping back to where they should be. If you were concerned that April 22, 23 or 24 was showing very little data for your goal of monetization, you are not alone.
We believe there is a possibility that this glitch could have been caused because YouTube is very close to rolling out YouTube Image Posts in the YouTube Shorts Feed for all accounts. We are seeing much higher numbers on YouTube Image Posts and have predicted this will be Google’s attempt to challenge Instagram.
In the next few weeks, look for the YouTube Studio app to show live views and realtime data for YouTube Image Posts. We are still trying to determine if YouTube Image Post impressions count towards the YouTube Shorts Feed monetization. The wording in the app is “YouTube Shorts views” so we are guessing the YouTube Image Posts impressions are starting to get added to the total views number which likely caused the glitch in the data from April 20-24, 2026.
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